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If the client wants RedHat, why don't you buy it for him?
–
innaMJul 30 '09 at 14:46

5

Also, if I might be flippant for a few seconds, if you are so shocked that RedHat dares charge for the additions they have paid licenses for (or created themselves) and for the support contract that RHEL always comes with, can we assume that you won't be charging the client for any work you do either?
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David SpillettJul 30 '09 at 16:10

Actually we will buy it, but I just wanted a quick and dirty installation so that I could do some testing :p
–
in.spiteJul 30 '09 at 17:53

1

Install him old RedHat if you hate him :]. Versions before RHEL was free but all of them age outdated. Latest free RedHat tm version was RedHat 9.0.
–
Alex BolotovJul 30 '09 at 19:58

In that case CentOS is the way to go - it is as close as you'll get to RHEL without getting RHEL.
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David SpillettJul 30 '09 at 20:44

...but, August 1st: The CentOS Development team had a routine meeting today with Lance Davis in attendance. During the meeting a majority of issues were resolved immediately and a working agreement was reached with deadlines for remaining unresolved issues. There should be no impact to any CentOS users going forward. The CentOS project is now in control of the CentOS.org and CentOS.info domains and owns all trademarks, materials, and artwork in the CentOS distributions. We look forward to working with Lance to quickly complete all the agreed upon issues. -- centos.org
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ArjanAug 9 '09 at 7:37

Red Hat Linux, assembled by the company Red Hat, was a popular Linux based operating system until its discontinuation in 2004.
...
Fedora, developed by the community-supported Fedora Project and sponsored by Red Hat, is the free version best suited for the home environment.

Yes. So if OP really needs a free version of Red Hat, he can surely find a copy of Red Hat 9 (last release, from 2003) somewhere! :-) But in all seriousness, I definitely wouldn't recommend using a distro that old.
–
JonikJul 30 '09 at 17:21

Several people have pointed out the CentOS is a Free drop-in replacement for RedHat Enterprise Linux.

Just a note about the history and where it stands now: RedHat (The company) used to release RedHat Linux for free and also charged money for it. They eventually added new variations of RedHat Linux including server editions, etc. The free product was discontinued and they were focussing on their Enterprise products, for which no binary download was available. However, they have to release the source, so the CentOS folks stepped up and release a free, re-branded RHEL with any proprietary bits removed.

For the "desktop"/"community" users, RedHat started the Fedora project, which serves as a free desktop Linux (the technology can be used for servers) and a testing ground for future RHEL releases. Fedora isn't as suitable for production use because it's not supported for very long so you have to upgrade the whole distribution frequently. But it is free.

So, to sum up, Fedora and CentOS are both free, neither is RHEL, but CentOS is close.

You can install Red Hat and not put in any key. I've done so, and the only adverse effect I can see is that whenever I run yum, I get a notice saying that Red Hat Network support is disabled. I've put in a few other yum repositories, though, so I don't suffer any adverse effects.